Creative musings in bright colors

Posts tagged ‘Petites Color Fever’

Another pink over teal mani! But this one is ALL SHINY. I kinda wish I had used a creme base honestly, but somehow the silver is metallic, the pink is metallic, and the teal has pink metallic shimmer. This was really quite shiny!

I’m pretty sure this is double stamped with the same gradient, which is why some of the lines aren’t exactly these same thickness? Or maybe the stamp just looks like that. I am far too lazy to check!

Sorry you guys! My posting schedule remains wonky…just because I haven’t edited any photos yet! I’ll try to get back on track. In the meanwhile, enjoy this really weird kinda floral mani with a really pretty base!

I don’t really know what I was thinking with this design. The polish I used as a base is super pretty but very busy, so I decided to throw three metallics on top of it? Not one of my best ideas.

Anyway, the base here is three thin coats of From the Land of Oz by Polished for Days. Unfortunately, my camera is not capturing the lavender-purple base of this polish, the camera likes to think it is more blue. I only used three coats for more glitter depth, it was full coverage in two. This polish is from Polish Pickup, so isn’t available anymore…but if you aren’t yet you should all go join PPU! This coming month is a revival of past favorites and a LOT of my very favorites are coming back, so if you missed something this would be a great time to pick it up!

Day 25’s theme is “fashion” which is a bit of a problem, as I am still wearing the same clothing I wore in high school (and I’m 29). That said, this years was a little easier than most! I’m also a little late in posting since I was traveling all day, oops!

While searching for fashionable gowns on google, I stumbled across an absolutely stunning dress by Marchesa. I want it. The colors and the pattern and the fabric and most especially the cut of the skirt. So, of course, I had to try and recreate it on my nails!

This mani took two days, mostly because I wanted a completely dry base color before I was willing to attempt to make a gradient using metallic polish. Usually, I end up with bubbles and messes galore, and I happen to be attending a wedding this weekend so my nails need to be flawless! So, I painted on the hot pink metallic base (Petites Color Fever – Raspberry Ice), waited a day, and THEN did the gradient (OPI – Cute Little Vixen and Confetti – Masquerade Ball). Success!

Initially, I was not going to put anything over my accent nail (which was going to be a black jelly with a pink-to-black stamp, but I gave up and grabbed one of my favorite glitterbomb polishes instead, The Unloved by Emily de Molly), but it looked too bright next to the completed gradient so I added a stamp that reminded me of the top of the Marchesa dress (BP – L049). I think it came out really well!

I am going to consider the fashion day a success this year, which might actually be a first for me! Also, my nails are super glittery and metallic. But I have to admit, I am not looking forward to trying to remove that glitter polish!

Traditionally, animal print day of the 31 Day Challenge has been one of my least favorites. I don’t enjoy leopard print, and I’ve done the traditional tiger stripes far too many times for it to be enjoyable. This time, I found a design that is still tiger-striped, but in a different way!

This mani was inspired by Polish and Paws because I never even thought to use this stamp! The other ones on the plate still don’t speak to me, but this was fun.

I also used this to compare my two dark orange glittery shimmer polishes…but totally forgot to take photos before the nail art was done! Oops. Anyway, on my pinky and pointer is two coats of OPI DS Indulgence, while on my ring, middle, and thumb is two coats of A England Gloriana. Indulgence is much brighter with more of a golden shimmer to it, while Gloriana is darker and has distinct golden flecks. The end result is that Gloriana looks more understated and elegant while Indulgence pops more!

Also I NEED polish thinner. 24 karat gold, which I used for the glitter gradient, is a dried up mess, useless for anything other than dab-on gradients! And even then it is painful to work with. Hope you enjoyed!

I wanted to ask you guys to guess what book this was from, but I put it in the title instead. In the past I have done any number of nerdy books (Dune and Enders Game come to mind first) and last year I did a children’s book (The Very Hungry Caterpillar). This year I wanted something nerdy but different…and I realized that one of the only books I had as a .pdf on my computer was War of the Worlds.

To be fair, this was first a radio broadcast (which, awesome), but I was introduced to it as a book. I also wanted something that no one had done before (that is very very rare…I think I was the first to do BB-8 nail art on one nail, and maybe C3P0 as a full mani or something…but usually someone else already had an idea for me to modify when I google anything). No one, as far as I can tell, has done this type of world-destructing giant robots before!

In terms of nail polish, the base color here (the orange) is new. When I was at ULTA picking up new makeup sponges for gradients (I finally ran out) I saw this orange on the clearance wrack and decided to try it! I’ll need to do a full comparison with my other medium orange (Thandie by Zoya…which is technically a shimmer but not really) at some point. Regardless, this is two easy coats of Sun of a Gun by ULTA, and it is quite pretty! A nice medium-dark orange creme.

The actual inspiration for the design came from art that I found elsewhere on wordpress. I can’t imagine painting a whole canvas with something that intricate!

This only took 30 minutes once the orange base was dry, which is really really fast! It wasn’t difficult, but it was fun, and its satisfying to know that I am the first to try this particular bit of weirdness! Also, sorry for posting this late…my week has been a mess and I just finished editing it! So, technically it is a day late. But that just means I’m posting twice in one day I suppose!

Blue! And teal! I am sooo glad I wrote down all the names of the polishes that I used when I made this, because there is no way I would remember them now.

This was the base of the mani that I used for my pshiiit-inspired design from Nail Art Fashion Week. As I was putting together the teal an blue splotches and glitter and flakies I really liked how it looked…so I took some photos! I usually only do that if I’m afraid that I’ll mess up the final result and an intermediate step looks good…in this case it gets it own post!

So anyway, lots of teal. I used the stamper smush (technical term) method to get the colors on. It worked great this time, but I’ve actually tried it again since and it looked awful. Some colors work and some don’t I guess!

Also, adding Sparkling Garbage to the top of ANYTHING makes it magic. My friends and I made some dragon eggs (more about that later) a week ago and we ended up topping a dark green metallic with Sparkling Garbage…it was magic.

Today’s prompt for Nail Art Fashion Week 2016 was “style icon.” Now, anyone who knows me knows I have 0 style sense (if it fits and has some type of glitter or pattern on it, I’ll wear it), and that I don’t care to get one. I wear sneakers with skirts and everyone else can just deal with it :-p

So, I had to think of something else for “style icon” and of course, I ended up with nail art style icon! Which means I had to mimic something by pshiiit…she is not my favorite nail art blogger, but its a toss-up between her and Very Emily who’s overall nail art style I like best! Everyone else (myself included) tends to vary widely in what we do for art…but pshiiit (and Emily) have a distinct feel to their nail art that I just love! In pshiiit’s case, it tends towards chevrons and pops of color or glitter.

Anyway, today’s nail art was inspired by pshiiit, so here we go! Lots of teal, some glitter, and some chevrons. And also a funny title because I couldn’t think of anything else.

Hope you enjoyed! Technically NAFW2016 goes through Sunday, but I never post on weekends AND I know nothing about the Fall 2016 collection (nor do I care that much. Fashion is wayyyy beyond me) so this is it!

I have no idea what I was going for here. It was basically “blue water marble gradient!” and “hot pink glitter!” so here we go.

I wanted to use my hot pink glitter…but I didn’t want to have to layer it and thus spend 45 minutes removing glitter from my nails. So, I laid down a coat of Raspberry Ice (which I had forgotten I owned…a one-coat hot pink metallic? How could I forget about it?) and then one coat of Cranfairy for the base. Glitters galore!

Once the pinks were dry, I did a shades of blue + clear marble. I should have gone with shades of pink or used a blue base. There is just too much contrast here. Oops!

When I got back from Thailand last week, I wanted to slap on a quick-but-pretty mani to ensure that my nails didn’t totally fall apart! This is what I ended up with.

This mani was deemed “so subtle” that my labmates didn’t think I had any art on it at all! They thought it was just teal. They have a point, my nail art is rarely this understated!

Anyway, I started with a base of Saint George by A England (what could be faster than a one-coater polish? I love Saint George, but I only use it on rare occasions because it wasn’t cheap!), stamped over with Figi by Petites Color Fever using Bundle Monster plate 604.

OMG GLITTER. So much glitter. Little tiny glittery rainbow! This mani was designed around Glitz by Mentality, which is basically a sparkly rainbow in a bottle (but with more teal and red than the other colors). But basically, GLITTER!

I couldn’t convince myself to cover the glittery goodness, so I only did an accent nail with Glitz. Despite being 100% glitter in a clear base, it only took 3 thin coats for full coverage. What’s more, the control was great (think Shimmer polishes)! There was 0 clean up with this polish. The glitter density also makes for great glitter gradients (see my thumb)! I did put glue down as a base coat, because I imagine this would remove like, well, a glitter :-p

The primary colors in Glitz are tiny glitters in shades of red, purple, teal, silver, and maybe some light blue. Somehow, you get flashes of green in there too, although I don’t actually see green glitter! So I accented the whole thing with a fishtail 🙂 It has been a while since I did a nail-braid!

I don’t usually do super-glitzy party nail, but when I do, I can’t imagine I won’t grab for this polish. Easy application and so much colorful glitter! If you want to add Glitz to your stash (and oh god the name is perfect), you can pick her up for $6.50 at the Mentality shop. Happy polishing!

Oh look, a pink manicure :-p. This one isn’t precisely Valentines-themed, but I figured the colors work so I might as well post it! This mani took a lot of time, because my two accent nails and my thumb were made from a stamping decal. Namely, Bundle Monster plate 604, where I then painted over every single tiny opening with a gradient of pink holographic polishes. It took forever, but I’m really proud of how it came out!

It is a bit sad that even hand-placing a decal, I can’t get everything 100% centered. Oy. It is also slightly sad that I couldn’t come up with anything more fun for my pinky and pointer nails, but I was SO TIRED OF LINES that I just went with dots. And because they are super-glittery, I think its ok!

My thumb ended up being my favorite, because I basically didn’t have to trim down the design. As it turns out, the most recent set of Bundle Monster plates fits absolutely perfectly on my nail. Which means that if I was able to stamp with perfect precision, it would be great (I can’t, so I tend to have to double stamp my thumbs, but it did make it very easy to apply the decal!).

Finally, my New Years manicure! I decided to try and do a pink/black/gold version of my popular chandelier mani from earlier this year. It came out looking pretty punk! I designed the colors around the glitter polish on my pinky and pointer, because I really wanted to wear it again 🙂

Really, this was pretty easy. Doing the same mani a second (well, actually 4th…I have also done it TWICE on my baby sister!) time makes it go faster. I didn’t have to look back at the initial design almost at all!

Sometimes, I just want to do dots. And all I have with me are pink and a silver. My intention with this pallet was to do a rough gradient of some type (I was traveling), but somehow I decided on pink fish scales. With silver as a contrasting color.

And then I decided that if Barbie were ever to do a scale mani, she would go with pink. Eye-searing pink. So we have a Barbie scale manicure. Honestly, this one looked rather cool on, but since I didn’t have my awesome nail camera, the colors are a bit odd (darn you iPhone!).

Sometimes, I get an urge to use ALL THE GLITTER POLISH. Presenting, gold and blue glitter. Crossing. And dots. But mostly crossing.

If you are going to try something like this, I recommend a LOT of scotch tape. Cleaning glitter off your cuticles is NOT fun, but I am proud to say this time I didn’t have to!

This started as a blue-to-gold gradient, covered with thin bands of striping tape, and then a gold-to-blue gradient in the opposite direction. Pretty straight forward actually, if a bit um…glitter heavy. I ended up needing two thick coats of top coat and it STILL wasn’t 100% smooth!

I decided to give I’ve Never Seen A Beautiful Witch by Different Dimension another try (especially after how easy Cranfairy was to work with). I was, yet again, disappointed. As pretty as this polish looks in the bottle it just does NOT work well on the nail.

I went ahead and complimented the pale pink in the polish with a light pink holo (Digital by Milani) and some butterfly stamps from various Bundle Monster plates (ask if you want to know which ones) with French White Creme – Wet n’ Wild and Raspberry Ice – Petites Color Fever.

This mani just makes me sad. It is all thick and lumpy…and then the stamping is ok but it doesn’t really pop because there are too many lumps!

Right. Happy Friday. Starting on Monday I will have some REAL nail art…and if I get my act together (no promises) I might have something on Sunday. With my face in it. Strange, eh?

My sister recently came to visit and dropped off a few small OPI trial size polishes for me to play with for a week. The first one I reached for was a beautiful deep magenta metallic polish. I can’t get enough of these metallics-with-depth!

This pink is two coats of Henna-Thing is Possible by OPI. Just beautiful. Out of the four colors I played with from this OPI set, this was my favorite! I decided to add some dots and swirls, based off a design by kimiko7878.

I can’t stop thinking that this mani looks like the side of some confused spaceship. Bright colors, black, glitter, and 3D holo dots. That being said, it is kinda a cool look! And I’ve always liked spaceships.

The star of this mani are the rainbow studs. They look like the glitter from OPI’s I Snow You Love Me but in stud form. And I love them. I only top-coated my pinky (all the others I just placed the studs in a little pool of wet top coat so they would stick but I could still pull them off without killing myself), but the holo-glitttery-goodness remained!

Colors

Pink: Petites Color Fever – Raspberry Ice

Black: Zoya – Storm

For some reason, I couldn’t get a pink + black holo pairing out of my mind when I saw these studs. So here is what you get!

To acquire some rainbow holo studs for yourself, head over to the Born Pretty Store. They are $4.20 for 300 pieces, and will be even cheaper when you use my 10% off code: LY5X31! Happy polishing!

Sometimes, really good ideas don’t pan out. Or they were just bad ideas to start with. I don’t know which of those two options resulted in this manicure, but either way I am not happy!

This started out as a bright pink gradient. Only, I messed that up a bit…so I decided to add glitter. And I couldn’t decide between pink or blue glitter (from the Born Pretty Store) so I did both. Some on one nail, some on another, and alternating lines on a few. Word to the wise: stick to simple when it comes to glitter. Oy. Clean up of my counter took almost an hour. Darn glitter!

In the end, this is just a giant fail. I should have left the gradient alone, or gone with pink-on-pink for the glitter. But, it is only fair that I share my failures with you guys! So ta-da: fail!

I had a formal this past weekend, and was planning to wear a blue ombre dress. Today also happens to be the ‘blue’ theme day in the GOT Crumpet Challenge! As it happens, some of my favorite blue polishes (and the ones that matched my dress best) were all over a year old.

I don’t even know how to describe this manicure other than AWESOME. I made a teal-to-blue ombre with two metallic polishes, and then stamped over them with black using Bundle Monster plate 301. Despite the myriad of bubbles on my nails (grrrr destroyed from that darn gel polish!) the end product looks awesome!

I recently started blog-stalking the queen of glitter placement: Polish All The Nails. Her patience and way with color is awe-inspiring. If you like all things shiny, check out her blog. Anyway…I recently received a set of 12 pots of hexagonal nail glitters to review from the Born Pretty Store, and decided I wanted to create a glitter ombre accent! So I set about carefully placing each glitter.

Even I am impressed. IT IS SO SPARKLY! I love the almost holographic sheen to the teal, and the mysteriousness of the dark blue. This nail took almost 20 minutes, I don’t know how she does it! I think you’ll be seeing quite a few more glitter placement accents in the near future…

What’s more, the Born Pretty Store accidentally sent me an extra set of 12 glitter pots! (Well, I had requested something else but they sent two of these instead) so one of YOU lovely readers gets to take home a set of 12! Since this isn’t polish, the giveaway is open internationally. I’ll be setting it up and running it this weekend, so check back in two days!

Colors

Teal: Petites Color Fever – Figi

Blue: Wet n’ Wild – Blue Moon

Black: Sinful Colors – Black on Black

Stamp: Bundle Monster – 301

In case you want to make your own epic glitter gradients, all of these sparkles can be found at the Born Pretty Store for $4.59! (And don’t forget to use my 10% off code if you buy something: LY5X31!) Hope you enjoyed!

So, I have only been blogging for a little over a year. Which is the same amount of time I have been doing my nails. This means that my favorites are not necessarily FROM this year, merely that I DISCOVERED them this year. Which is to say that these are my favorite polishes out of the 200 that I currently own (ok, 197 polishes that I own).

Also keep in mind, my criteria for “favorite” is “I would wear this without nail art because it is so darn PRETTY”. Some of these are almost impossible to art with, but I love them anyway!

Honorable mention: these two polishes are not ones I would wear alone, but they are so useful in nail art and such a shocking color that I almost would….Sinful Colors – Endless Blue

Petites Color Fever – Figi

And now, my top 10 polishes of the year:#10: Zoya – Faye
I just cannot get over the beautiful duochrome + glitter! The color is a bit pale for my tastes (everything else on this list is a darker color), but this does make my top 10.

#9: China Glaze – Ruby Pumps
Ruby Pumps is actually the ONLY china glaze I own (go figure). It is also the most beautiful deep glittery red, and as I love reds, this had to make the list. It narrowly beat out my second favorite red…Blaze by Zoya.

#8: ORLY – Sparkling Garbage
Although this polish takes quite a few layers to be opaque on its own, the rainbow payoff is worth it! The deep pond glittery look just blows my mind. It also dries smooth and shiny, putting it ahead of most of my linear holo polishes.

#7: A England – Saint George
I love A England polishes (all 3 that I own). I think the color of Saint George is just a bit more unique than Tristam. I will say that Excalibur is my go-to silver stamping polish, but I don’t think I would wear it alone!

#6: Zoya – Alegra
For someone with almost 200 polishes, I have surprisingly few pinks. However, Alegra was a polish I knew I NEEDED to have. Beautiful, glittery, bright, and just generally wonderful. It is pink without being subtle!

#5: Zoya – Valerie
I love a good purple. I own holographic polishes, glitters, shimmers, metallics, cremes…but for some reason, Valerie, with her pink and copper glitter, just stands out.

#4: Julie G – Mermaid’s Tale
Blues and teals make up the vast majority of my polish collection. I love all of them. That being said, the beautiful duochrome glitter in Mermaid’s Tale really calls to me! I don’t use this polish often enough…maybe because I never want to cover it up with art!

#3: butterLONDON – Scuppered
Now we get to the good stuff. Scuppered makes my top three for a few reasons…the glitter load is incredible, the control of the polish is great, and the depth and variety of color is amazing. I would never think to mix copper, pink, and green. But it works. And I love it.

#2: ILNP – Birefringence
This was a hard call. My top two choices for this year are BOTH indy polishes, possibly because they are intended to make a statement! I put this polish second, if only because I do own other multichromes. None are quite as beautiful and spectacular as Birefringence, and none go on quite as well. Also, this polish is blue/purple/green…my favorite combination.

#1: Emily de Molly – Cosmic Forces
I cannot get over this polish. I stalked restocks at Llarowe for weeks trying to get my hands on Cosmic Forces, and I am so glad I did! I don’t own anything like it, with the large holographic glitters, the deep violet jelly base…it’s incredible. I have NO idea how to use it in nail art, but every time I want to just wear something (which granted, is seldom) this is the polish I gravitate towards!

And that is my top 10. How about you guys, any favorites?

(If you want to see all the polishes in my collection, to give you an idea how hard it was to pick and choose, check out the “Polish List” tab at the top of my page!)